marvin in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture found trump another one percenters will tell you they succeeded without help from the government are great my friends and i will say that's not true how has the self-made myth taken over american society and how can we challenge it also paul ryan embraces austerity destroys the middle class and thank rolls big oil all in water a hard day's work that and more tonight's big picture rubble and tonight's daily

take up to lottery tickets and guns have in common here's a hint it all began with reagan. are the kinds of conversations of great minds i'm joined by brian miller brian is the executive director of united for a fair economy has worked in the social change movement for over nineteen years started as a community organizer for groups like the louisiana coalition for tax justice and the louisiana citizen action for. or recently from one thousand nine hundred seven to two thousand and nine brian was executive director of tennesseeans for fair taxation. helped create a state income tax and helped to pass a food tax reduction ryan's early accomplishments include uncovering corporate abuses which public officials were getting tax breaks for their own companies and

helping win passage of water quality funding in kentucky is a graduate of the university of louisiana and lafayette and the author of the new and critically acclaimed book the self-made myth and the truth of how government helps individuals and businesses succeed he joins us now from our studios in new york city brian welcome thank you don't let me on the show thanks for joining us let's begin at the beginning here how is wealth created adam smith one hundred one what is wealth and how and who creates. again i think that's really what we really look at in this book there's a narrative that's popular in our culture that somehow wealth is all the result of these heroic individuals who through individual effort through through hard work and smarts and personal sacrifice and leadership create these vast business enterprises and it's sort of a self-made story that's deeply woven into our nation's history and and is lifted

up by political pundits because it serves a political agenda but what we look at in this book is that the the true story of wealth creation is far more complex than that work is important obviously but so is luck so is historical timing so are the contributions of others privilege importantly the vast array of public investments we all pay for through our tax system in education in transportation infrastructures of publicly funded research and more so. i'm curious where this all came from i remember the story reading years ago about how john rockefeller had hired a p.r. guy who suggested that he go out and give shiny dimes away stand on the street corner and give them away during the great depression and he did that and apparently it turned his reputation from being that of a miserly margin into a benevolent billionaire or a millionaire of the day and a billionaire into his dollars. has there been an arc of.

manipulation of public perception of wealth in the united states or or is this myth of the self-made man just the extension of the you know the firesign theater kind of humorously said you know car of the you know the american dream out of the out of the american indian basically you know the the europeans coming over here and taking over this this continent i mean what where did what what's the what's the kernel of this this side guys this is weird myth those. sure you know i think the story of the self-made myth goes far far back in our nation's history you know beginning with nations early for earliest founding in the stories we tell ourselves about how we were different from the european european nations where wealth was determined by a recent pratik lineage and when americans were supposedly carving their hair like that of the wilderness there was some truth to that but as you said it was also

made possible by displacing of native peoples and so forth so it was a again a more complex story than we had the story of horatio alger who wrote novels of these rags to riches story is very popular in the hundreds and in a lot of other stories of that success and it's part of what we like to tell ourselves but when it really takes on the political realm is by the one nine hundred fifty s. of course you had iran come along with a book called atlas shrugged and in the iran version of the self-made myth it's almost like horatio alger on steroids not only are her the business people in her book responsible for their own success and fortune but they're responsible for the success of the entire nation around them it's like they're holding the whole world up like the greek titan atlas saying in her novels and. and again the notion that all wealth derives from these heroic individuals and in today's. punditry of the language and the pundits that you are today you hear job creators that's really an echo of that old myth you know again it serves

a political purpose and there are people who are bankrolling this narrative. john allison who's a former banker with b.b. and t. has been giving two million dollars grants to universities and colleges to create a course on capitalism provided that they include iran's applet shrugged as required reading for the course sixty universities have taken him up on the offer despite the objections of college professors about wealthy donors dictating course curriculum again they know it serves a political agenda to tell the story and so they tell and retell it and retell it over but it's time we have a more honest discussion and that's what the book because self-made myth is real. the about my dad was a book collector and he had all these nineteenth century early twentieth century books and i actually have read several of the horatio alger books and they all tell basically the same story which is a young man comes to town destitute an older wealthy man takes him in and helps him become successful and long after her issue alger died it came out that he was

in the young boys and you know that part of the never really got told and i and rand her stories are equally fictional i mean and the main character of atlas shrugged is this brother and sister who run this railroad and then have a party in the ways they both in her to from their day out and self-made fortune there. these stories are not just fictitious and dysfunctional you know filled with dysfunctional characters but they have really very little to do with the idea of of the self-made man or woman in the united states how have they had such power over this. well you know again there are people who are actively pushing this agenda and they know if if these the folks who are pushing this message out can get americans to believe that all wealth arrives from these heroic job creators these these entrepreneurs who get up earlier work harder or smarter than all the rest of us

then all of a sudden things like inequality. are simply the result of different work efforts you know it's the people that the top are super rich simply because they work harder than all the rest of us and that's that's what they want us to believe that that's what we're supposed to be believed by by buying into this story and by hearing this story over and over again you know no matter how extravagant c.e.o. pay is you know it's justified because of they created this wealth in fact there's a in the book by al dunlap of scott paper where he was testifying in front of. about his extravagant c.e.o. power this is extravagant c.e.o. pay and his response was oh i created x. billion dollars of shareholder wealth and therefore almost only getting a tiny sliver of it and of course when he said i there's no mention of the thousands of workers that work for him or or the vast. governmental supports that his business gets it's it's him that single handedly creating this wealth that's

what we're told to believe but buying into this wealth and again if you believe that all wealth the rise of these individuals been suddenly government has no role and we need to cut taxes as low as possible and in the effort to rein in inequality is suddenly cast as punishing success and so it's a very problematic narrative and so you mention the iran is fiction absolutely so as it was fiction so when we wrote this book we went out and interviewed real life business people across the country we interviewed a significant number of fourteen of whom we ended up profiling in the book telling their real stories not the fiction but the real life stories about how they went to public schools how they've been if it from g.i. bills on a personal level how maybe they got some head start so they were lucky. but they also talk about the stories of their business and how their business depends upon the transportation infrastructure on the courts to protect the copyrights and in the education system to provide them with an educated workforce time and time again

through these true real life stories we get a much more on estate yes it's more nuanced it's more complex but it's a more on a story of wealth creation and it leads to a healthier set of public policy choices i think was david cay johnston although it might have been struck collins who coauthored the forward to your program has a chapter in one of their books called bill gates welfare queen i'm pretty sure it's david cay johnston and basically what he's saying is that if the government had not established copyright laws and and had made them as long as they are made the penalties as draconian as they are and and made the benefits of them as generous as they are bill gates would be rich but he wouldn't be a multi multi multi multi billionaire and the same can be said for the disney corporation why is it that americans never think of these guys as you know bill gates welfare queen for example or king i guess would be more appropriate

. i think it it starts with ourselves i'm going to think americans in general or oblivious to the public investments that they benefit from all around them every day there's a there's a study we quote in the or in the book in the self-made myth. by suzanne mettler. professor who went out and surveyed people and asked them how do you benefited from a government program and the vast majority of people that she surveyed said no but then she asked follow up questions did you ever receive a pell grant did you ever receive a g.i. bill or an f.h.a. guaranteed loan or did you ever take so security and what she found is a huge percentage of the people who said they'd never received a government benefit suddenly realize that they had been asked a very specific question and i think it's because it's so on their present were it's like you know keep your government hands off my medicare if people take it for granted as though it's some somehow a naturally occurring force and so i think we do it in our own personal lives we project that onto people at the top of the income ladder by the same token somehow

their entire business success was the result of their hard work. you mentioned bill gates bill gates his father bill gates sr wrote one before was actually to force for the book known by bill gates sr the other one by chuck collins in bill gates sr forward he talks about his son he says you know if my son had had been in a developing country in south america or you know somewhere else in the world you know he may be just as smart as he was now but he wouldn't be the success that we know him as some of the microsoft founder you know the reality is that he owes a huge debt of his wealth to the nation that he was born in to the fact that we have an incredible public education system in this nation and the fact we have a transportation system to ship the microsoft products back and forth across the country you mention the copyright protection. and yes and even the internet i mean the internet was not a creation of the invisible hand despite the wishful thinking of some it was

a cry. government. funded research and internet possible is what created the internet and al gore actually did work on that legislation. back with more conversations with brian miller right after the break.

and the. other part of the. world is a big. blog

about conversations in the great minds with brian miller tonight ryan is the executive director of united for a fair economy has worked in the social change movement for over nineteen years as a community organizer for groups like the louisiana coalition for tax justice and louisiana citizen action recently from ninety seven to two thousand and nine brian was executive director of tennesseeans for taxation way up create a state income tax and helped to pass a food tax reduction is the author of the new and critically acclaimed book the

self-made myth and the truth about how government helps individuals and businesses succeed and get back to it brian first of all i'm curious about your own personal history what what woke you up and what got you into. the this is the social and economic world that has brought you to having written this book. you know i think like a lot of people and like a lot of people across this nation in many of the business leaders profiled in this book there's a recognition of the privilege that some of us came from a middle class but you know growing up in south louisiana i saw a lot of poverty and i saw a lot of great inequality and so you know i began working on these issues down in the louisiana organizing communities that were being targeted because of their political power they were politically powerless communities and so you know i got

my foot in organizing but i've always cared about inequality income and wealth inequality in and that led me to where i am now of course here at united for a fair economy that's what we do our entire organization is devoted to reigning in extreme inequality and it's something that's important to me personally and it's i'm something that's important to all the thousands of supporters who support our work from across the country in it and it really is is it's part of what led to the the creation the writing this book there's there's a. certain requirements i suppose if you're going to do away with or reduce in across inequality. a certain apartment for redistribution of wealth that's you can't deny that back in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's when we had some of the strongest economic growth in the history of america and relatively low inequality c.e.o.'s making thirty times that average people did the top income tax rate was ninety one percent for example corporations paid about thirty five percent of total cost of government now it's down a lot in percent. how do you or how do we as

a society i mean put in the middle of this for a long long time and look into this with this book how do we reach that balancing point where it's not totally laissez faire the direction that the paul ryan for example would like to take as the iran direction where you end up like somalia and it's not totally from each according to his means into each. ability into egypt poured into his new. it's you know karl marx there's there's this middle ground how do we define the parameters of that middle ground and you know well i guess that sticky question stands as it is. sure but when you start with the whole redistribution on point and then go to the the how do we how do we find that that balance and i guess it's only redistribution if you believe that the current distribution is justified if you believe that the world right now the top one percent controls more wealth than the bottom ninety percent combined are we to

believe that the top one percent works that much harder than the bottom ninety percent of americans combined i think that that's a stretch and the reality is and one of the things we looked at we have a report that we've done in the past and we cite in this book called born on third base base which documents that a third over a third of the people in the forbes four hundred list were essentially born there and those that weren't born there were born well on their way to the list the reality is most of the people in the one percent were one percenters by birth or at least a significant portion of them to assert that somehow they work for every penny that they have is is absurd and that's really what the book challenges as far as trying to balance i mean you know i think one of the things that's powerful about the self-made myth this book that we wrote is that. is that you know we're celebrating these entrepreneurs there's fourteen business people in this book that we profile who were celebrating you know we they worked hard they did great things kim jordan the c.e.o. of new belgium brewing nicole rose got

a company called back to the roots ben cohen of course of ben and jerry's jerry fiddler created a company called wind river systems a tech company that he sold to intel for eight hundred and some odd million hugely successful individuals. so yeah absolutely we want to honor entrepreneurship we want to encourage that kind of leadership but it's not an either or question and that's where i and rand and paul ryan get it wrong it's not quote a. either private sector or government it's both and we need private business we need the private sector we need entrepreneurs venturing out striking out breaking out group great new ideas but we also need a robust public sector because that's what makes all those businesses possible that's what makes all our prosperity possible we need a well funded education system we need an efficient transportation system we need significant funds for publicly funded research and development and we need a court and regulatory environment that provides fair rules to the road that is the foundation upon which success is made possible both our individual success as and

as americans of all across the nation but also business leaders it's in a way it's i like to liken it to removing the social contract you know once upon a time i think americans really identified with the idea that we were all in it together that our prosperity was deeply intertwined we rise and fall together and we're really calling for renewable a back contract because by investing in the common good. we are we are we are creating a fertile ground upon which all of us can do better and businesses can prosper and that's really what what one of the core messages of the book your publisher varicolored put together a video that shows the number of people any government domini i think it's how it's browser domi is one of them let me just play a few seconds of this twenty one seconds of this for our viewers. oh ok it's going to take just a minute. here not that i did it all myself.

but it's that his theory per piece is now there and it will be there is no such thing as well for me personally there are people who take it then teacher the structure that they were handed. now brian when you were talking before about asking people if they if they took advantage of government programs and they said no and then you ask for that you get a polygraph or f.h.a. loan or something like that those are fairly obvious things that people have to think about and realize you know do you get medicare or whatever the subtle stuff you don't for example do you have a checking account in a bank that has deposit insurance do you use cash that is stable as a currency relative to other currencies in the planet because of because of the fed because of monetary policy the part of the treasury. do you eat in restaurants and not worry that you're going to die as

a consequence of it as as people have been in history i mean in new york you have cholera epidemics in the late nineteenth century both fled the city because of the just this really fundamental stuff and yet paul ryan's budget that he pushed through you know that ten republicans voted in the house yesterday actually would have ended the e.p.a. it would have radically cut back he was da inspections it would have radically cut back f.d.a. inspections of our drugs and things i mean not only might bill but gates not have become you know well educated in the sense that he might have died at the age of sixteen from bad food how do you get that through to people. you know i think we again i think a lot of americans do know this and they recognize this i think some of the challenges we have to make that bedhead invisible visible om you know we hope to be doing it through the book but there's a lot of people out in the country across the country really lifting up. these these these things that we all benefit from that makes them rich is all our lives

and makes our lives safer and the lives of our children safer and is important and you know one of the things that we really focus on in the book and i want to i want to point out another thing because this is how we find you know the business leaders that we profiled in this book again they have a very very honest view of their own success they recognize that their success is not entirely their own and that the vast array of public investments made their business success possible and in there's two ways that does it right on one hand maybe they as an individual business in individual entrepreneur maybe they got pell grants maybe they went to school public schools but also their business their entire business depends on public structures of an organizational level to provide them with an educated workforce copyright protection and much more in the bigger the business the more of those public investments they're bringing to bear to make their business success possible so and as

a result it's only right and fair that they pay progressive lean more to support those structures and that's why when the business leaders we profile in this book hear about progressive taxes whether it's an estate tax or a millionaire's tax or ending the bush tax cuts for the wealthy they're more than happy to step up in to the plate and say yes tax me more i'm willing to pay more and it's not about punishing success it's about a responsibility to pay back the society that made their success possible it's about paying it forward to the next generation is the same opportunities. the the american media by and large seems to be ignoring this message and back job creators as you know people throw that word out in. never i never heard of challenged by you know to meet the press kind of show never and and yet it's such a obvious canard. how do how do we have your book is a great start but how to average americans who want to spread this

word do so how do we change the language of our society you know particularly when you've got the frank luntz of the world who are very carefully language in there and of society in the in the fox news of the world pounding that message. i'm glad you brought that up because we're really you know this book is a very small part of a much larger conversation and and we're calling upon people to take action and get involved there's a there's an action section in the book towards the end where there suggested steps people can take writing letters to the editor any time you see someone claimed to be self-made anytime you see a reference to job creators to tell this moron a story and it's incumbent upon all of us to be a part of that conversation and we've also set up a website self-made myth dot org where a person can can visit learn more about the book tours are going to travel across the country get information on some of the messaging and also tell your own story there's a portal there we're collecting stories of business people in particular who are

willing to tell this story because what we really need we need that we need americans from all stripes telling this story and we particularly it's particularly powerful when it comes from the business people themselves the people who are elevated and used as poster children for four as the job creators when they step forward and say no i didn't do it alone no gene gordon and so a lot of people in our book tell very different stories and you know one of the things we didn't talk about i won't get time to mention briefly is the whole inequality issue itself. you know and a lot of the business leaders that we profiled in the book recognize that. that extreme inequality is not only socially destructive but it's also bad for business because they need customers who can afford to buy stuff and so it's really about renewing the contract and that's where the demand comes from it makes our work brian no i thank you so much for being with us thank you tom glad to be on the show to see this conversation again or our other conversations the great minds go to our web site it conversations and great minds dot com. after the break is the

republican vision for america want to watch tens of millions of americans have the social safety net pulled from underneath them to give tax breaks the one percent that and more influence because you're wrong. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you

know. i'm charged as a big. story which i. love and they alone are still real get the real headline from it none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people don't watch t.v. and what if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back in t.v. .